In the area of stored value systems, a common problem is the manner in which account holders add value to their corresponding stored value accounts. This value may represent currency, but might also represent more abstract forms of value such as points, units, credits, or minutes. These stored value accounts could include pre-paid cellular phone accounts, prepaid credit card accounts, or balances stored at an online retailer. For various reasons, an account holder may desire to add value to his stored value account via retail purchases. These retail purchases may or may not be face-to-face. This may occur, for example, if the account holder may not be able to directly contact the maintainer of the stored value account. This may also occur if the account holder would like to add value to his stored value account using cash. Using cash may not be feasible unless the account holder can directly contact the maintainer of the stored value account. Accordingly, an account holder may desire to add value to his account via an intermediary such as a retailer.
Adding value to a stored value account may involve the following steps. The account holder selects a stored value card that corresponds to a specific type of account and the amount of value that the account holder would like to add. The account holder then purchases the stored value card via a retail transaction. Alternatively, information printed on a receipt or other stored value instrument may be used in place of or in addition to the stored value card. This retail transaction may include contact with the entity that maintains the account to authorize the stored value instrument. The account holder will then interface with the entity that maintains the stored value account to add value to his stored value account. This interfacing may be via the internet, via a phone call, via a text message or some forms of electronic communications. As part of this interfacing, the account holder must manually transmit a sequence of numbers that are printed on the stored value instrument. This sequence of numbers may be called a PIN. To account for the varying number of account holders, varying denominations, varying number of transactions, and to provide validation, this PIN must be a long sequence of numbers and could easily contain over 15 digits.
The manual process of entering a PIN to add value to the stored value account is rife with errors. In the case of a phone call, any error in the process of entering a 15 digit number may require restarting the manual entry process at the beginning, which might also result in an error. In addition to entry of the PIN itself, the account holder must either remember or determine the appropriate number to call or the appropriate number to send a message to, which is another source of error for the account holder. Moreover, this PIN may be obscured by a silvery scratch-off material that must first be removed to make the sequence of numbers visible. The scratching off process introduces at least two additional sources of error. The account holder might under-scratch the silvery material resulting in some numbers of the PIN being mistaken for other numbers. The account holder might continually attempt reentry of the PIN until this error is detected. The account holder might also over-scratch the silvery material and scratch away the numbers underneath. This problem cannot be easily corrected without contacting either the retailer or the maintainer of the stored value account or possibly both.
The current process of adding value to a stored value account is inherently time consuming and inefficient because of its manual nature. Because of human fallibility, that process is inevitably even more frustrating and inefficient at times. Such frustration and inefficiency reduces the value of the stored value system to both account holders and those that maintain such accounts.